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Nine For 50

Hi this is Fred Wallace with " Off the Wire " brought to you by your local Auto Logic- the Logical Choice.

I was watching the New York Rangers play in Pittsburgh the other night and the center ice logo at the PPG Paints Arena depicted a Penguin with a large " 50 ".

Has it been 50 years since the first NHL expansion ?

I got thinking about the 6 newcomers and their relative level of success.

You can argue that Pittsburgh has been the most successful, with the Penguins winning 4 Stanley Cups.

Having said that, had the Penguins not been so staggeringly unsuccessful, they never would have landed Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin.

So maybe Philadelphia is the most successful. The Flyers won the Stanley Cup back to back in 1974 and 75 and made the finals numerous times since but unfortunately ran into the Islanders, the Oilers and Detroit at their zenith.

The LA Kings have 2 recent Stanley Cups but it took the Kings 45 years to get things going.

Minnesota entered in 1967, but it was transplanted Dallas who won the Cup in 1999.

St Louis has never won the Stanley Cup and Oakland staggered to the mid 70's before they became Cleveland and later merged with Minnesota who bolted for Dallas.

So over 50 NHL seasons, the Class of 1967 have hoisted the Stanley Cup 9 times, that's almost a 20 percent success ratio.... or an 80 percent failure rate.